Chapter
41
I paused at the door of the barn before twisting the handle. Because of the remoteness of the location, I doubted it would be locked. I wrapped my fingers around the round cylinder. The cold metal sucked the warmth from my hand as effectively as a block of ice. I twisted the knob, which offered slight resistance through the internal springs. The door swung open, revealing a cavernous interior bathed in goggle-induced green. This wasn’t the first meth lab I had run across. They were all over the place in economically depressed areas like Vista County. I had never encountered anything like this one, though. This wasn’t the workspace of a backyard chemist. It was what would come to mind if you were told to imagine a college or industrial chemistry lab.
It wasn’t made up of a mismatched assortment of soda bottles, mason jars and hot plates. It was not a disorganized array of chemicals with trash strewn about haphazardly. There were no telltale boxes of cold medicine. Instead, the walls were lined with neat work counters. Shelves on the wall above the workstations were lined with what must have been tens of thousands of dollars worth of glassware. Plastic barrels were lined neatly along the far wall like formations of soldiers standing at attention. Metal shelves arrayed next to the barrels contained dozens of brown bottles which I recognized from high school chemistry as containing light sensitive chemicals.
The counters lining the wall had metal rods which were clamped together in horizontal and vertical arrangements, forming maze-like patterns protruding from the counter surface. Bottles and flasks were affixed to the rods. Glass tubes spiraled lazily from one container to another. Some containers rested in beakers full of water. Others were suspended in mid-air.
The center of the room had stainless steel appliances. There were several refrigerators, which I recognized, and there were a lot of items which were completely foreign to me. It all looked very expensive and technical.
The more I saw, the less I understood. Curtis had dropped out of high school. He didn’t have the knowledge, finances or the vision to set up something of this magnitude. The orderliness of the lab was beyond Curtis’ ability to maintain. He was involved for sure, but he was, by no means, the mastermind behind it.
I imagined that he started cooking meth here on a small scale. Eventually his production outweighed what he and his sidekicks were using. He had enough left after each production to start selling to a middle man. The buyer saw the hideaway and went in as a partner on a mega lab at Curtis’ location. The part I didn’t understand was why somebody big enough to develop this lab would keep Curtis around. He was nothing but a liability, especially when he brought all his buddies and hood rats with him. It was only a matter of time before somebody talked and brought this newly built empire crashing down in flames before it had an opportunity to become truly profitable.
The metal door quietly
screeched
against the metal frame when Jeb pulled it closed, cutting off all outside light. There were several sources of dim light in the back corner of the lab. They provided enough illumination for my goggles to function, but not naked eyes. Matt and Jeb were effectively blind. The light sources cast small halos for several feet and no more.
I heard a muffled banging behind me and turned to see Matt bumping into the wall as his hand groped around the doorway. Finding what he was looking for, his hand stopped searching and moved up in a well practiced motion. Two switches clicked as they closed an unseen circuit. A faint pop in the ceiling was followed by a hum. Nothing happened. Several seconds later, rows of dim lights illuminated faintly from the ceiling. Each shown like a distant lighthouse on a stormy sea, hope to those lost in obscuring gloom. I turned my goggles off and pivoted them up above my eyes as the massive bulbs heated and began to emit dim blue light.
When the light reached a bright enough level to illuminate the interior, Matt whistled softly. “It’s too bad there’s no one left to care, because this has to be one of the biggest meth labs in the country. Busting this would put our department on the map.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about Lost Hills being an arcane point on the map any longer. After yesterday, I’m afraid everyone knows where we are.” The increasing luminosity of the overhead lights brought the details of the lab into focus as the light from the burning bulbs changed from blue to yellow to a more natural white.
“What do we do with this place?” Jeb asked. “Should we burn it?”
“We’re going to leave it be,” I said in frustration. This was the find of a lifetime. Two days ago, I would have given my pension to find a lab half this size. Now, like Matt said, it didn’t matter anymore. This lab wouldn’t have the chance to pump out any more poison to kids and junkies across the western half of the continent. In a single day, its customer base had dried up. Burning it would only catch the surrounding wild lands on fire. With no one left to quench hungry flames, the fire would burn until the fall rains came. The lusty blaze would devour every resource in its path, resources that could prove to be the difference between our survival and death.
No, we would leave the lab alone and its usefulness would die with the rest of the population. It would stand for decades as a monument to the depravity of man, long after man himself had been knocked from the throne of dominance and was striving for his very survival like his Stone Age counterpart had thousands of years before.
Zack interrupted my contemplation. “As interesting as this is, it isn’t why we came. Let’s keep moving.” Everybody moved to the door. Zack grasped the interior knob with one hand as he moved the other hand to the side of the door frame and pushed the switch down. The burgeoning brightness above us died out without having ever reached its crescendo. The buzz of the high voltage ballasts also died; however, silence did not return to the night. The high pitch hum was replaced by a deeper droning. My ears strained in the darkness, searching for the source. It was coming from outside the building, of that I was sure.
We exited the building, careful to remain in the recesses of the shadows. Eight ears struggled to decipher the origin of the sound. After ten seconds, Jeb started, “That’s an airplane!”
He was right. After another twenty seconds, all doubt was gone. It was an airplane and it was coming in our direction. We moved closer to the house, searching the sky for a visual confirmation to the information our ears were relaying. The thumping bass from the house quieted and died away as a song ended. We had taken cover behind a windowless shed as we continued searching for the aircraft. A voice inside the shed crackled in Spanish. Another voice responded. The second was crystal clear.
“What did they say?” I asked Matt, who was fluent in Spanish.
“The first voice asked to activate the runway lights. The second acknowledged the request.” As if confirming Matt’s translation, a string of white lights displaced the darkness along the edges of the dirt airstrip. Each end was bracketed by a row of four red lights. The rectangular border of the airstrip was plainly outlined.
As the plane drew closer, the high pitched whine of a turbine engine separated itself from the deep roar of the propeller. The sound of the aircraft changed direction as it turned from base to final approach. A landing light illuminated, giving away the exact location of the aircraft, which was now on a short final approach.
The owner of the voice in the shed exited and walked passed where we were hidden in the shadows. His dark figure momentarily eclipsed a runway light as he walked between us and the beacon, traversing the distance to the end of the taxiway.
The aircraft touched down on the dirt surface and taxied to the pole hanger. The pilot cut off the fuel supply and the earsplitting scream of the turbine engine began spooling down.
Before the propeller had stopped spinning, the radioman carried a set of wooden steps to the rear of the aircraft. The rear door opened and five men exited the plane and descended the steps to the ground. The pilot’s door opened, a metal step was kicked down, and another man exited the plane.
The music from the house had stopped. The approach and landing of the airplane had not escaped the notice of the partiers inside. Apparently, the appearance of the aircraft was a new development to them and the party spilled out of the house onto the wraparound porch.
A one sided conversation began in loud and rapid Spanish. Matt translated. From the flow of the tirade it became obvious that the speaker, who was also the pilot, was the boss. The meth lab was his. His concern followed my earlier observation. The people on the porch were a threat to his new empire. He wanted to know where they came from and why they had been allowed on the property. Moreover he was furious that the precious generator fuel for powering the lab was being wasted for a drunken party inside the house.
The radio operator related that Curtis had brought most of the mob last night and the rest early this morning.
The boss demanded to see Curtis immediately. I don’t know much Spanish. Even with my lingual deficiency, I could pick out the bursts of profanity screamed in fury. The situation was spiraling into an abysmal pit from which I doubted the radio operator would return unscathed.
The radio man frantically explained that Curtis had left just before sundown on an unstated mission that he said would solve the security concerns.
The boss reached behind his back and pulled a full size pistol out of his waist band. In a continuous movement, and without warning, he pointed the muzzle toward the radio man’s knee and pulled the trigger. Before the sound of the explosion had reverted to an echo off the buildings, he adjusted his aim slightly to the side and another burst of flame spouted from the end of the gun. The radio man screamed in agony and dropped to the ground.
The mob of women screamed in unison and ran into the house, as if it would offer protection from the vindictive rage they had just witnessed.
The boss shrieked one last outburst at the radioman, who was now whimpering in the fetal position, clutching his shattered knees.
Matt whispered, “He just told the guy that his punishment was mild compared to what Curtis is going to receive when he returns.”
The boss roared a continuing tirade as he approached the house one hundred yards away. He reminded me of a barking wiener dog, scolding an unwelcome intruder to his territory. The difference was, unlike the dog, he had the strength to back up his bark with vicious action.
“We have to do something, Connor. He’s telling the girls in the house what he’s going to do to them before he kills them. Without translating the specifics, it’s not acceptable.”
The five men following the boss seemed to be divided into two camps. Two of them appeared giddy at the prospect of partaking in the immoral suggestions that had been made. They were following in close step to the boss. The other three had not moved. Their faces suggested a revulsion that they dared not mouth lest they fall into the same ill favor as the radio man and share his fate, or worse yet, whatever fate was in store for Curtis. They fell in behind the other two, although at a less energetic pace, dreading the activities in which they would be expected to participate.
The boss yelled something else toward the house. His last outburst was immediately answered by two quiet pops from Zack’s silenced rifle. The nickel plated pistol dropped from the boss’ grip and thudded onto the hard dirt that had been packed by years of being tromped over by cattle. The boss momentarily rose arrow straight, screamed in Spanish, and fell to the ground, landing face down. The two-man fan club at his heels lost interest in the boss and sprinted toward the house.
Two more chirps from Zack’s rifle and both men sprawled forward and slammed into the ground. Neither one moved. The reluctant trio raised their hands above their heads and stood statue still. Matt, Jeb and I covered them and Zack advanced on the boss, vociferating loudly in Spanish as he moved forward. I looked to Matt for a translation and all he did was smile.
“What did he say?” I demanded.
Matt chuckled, “All I can say is he has a very fluent command of the Spanish language and an imagination that rivals the boss’.”
The boss moaned between outbursts directed at Zack. He tried to reach for his pistol. Both of his shoulders had been destroyed by Zack’s precisely placed shots and his arms couldn’t obey his commands well enough to be effective. Zack kicked the pistol away and rolled the boss over with the toe of his boot.
Zack spoke to the boss in rapid Spanish and the boss spat on the ground in reply. Zack spoke again. Again, the boss spat between moans.
Zack placed the toe of his boot on the boss’ shoulder and twisted his foot back and forth as he pushed it down toward the ground. The action drew a guttural scream from the boss. I started toward him and Matt grabbed my shoulder.
“Leave him be. He’s playing the boss’ game. Let him have a taste of his own medicine for once in his life.”
I relented as Matt translated Zack’s barrage of questions. I didn’t need translation for most of the boss’s blasphemous and obscene responses. His tone provided all the translation that was needed. Matt filled in the details anyway. The boss got to the part about what he was going to do to Zack’s mother and sisters, but before he could finish, Zack squeezed off one last round which slammed into the boss’ forehead and silenced his tirade forever. His insults and days of terror and torture were complete. In the end, there was still justice.